The Imperialist (38 page)

“I hear the ladies had pleasant weather,” Finlay remarked.

“Capital – capital! You won’t smoke? I know nothing about these cigars; they’re some Grant left behind him – a chimney, that man Grant. Well, Finlay” – he threw himself into the armchair on the other side of the hearth – “I don’t know what to say to you.”

“Surely,” said Finlay restively, “it has all been said, sir.”

“No, it has not all been said,” Dr. Drummond retorted. “No, it has not. There’s more to be said, and you must hear it, Finlay, with such patience as you have. But I speak the truth when I say that I don’t know how to begin.”

The young man gave him opportunity, gazing silently into the fire. He was hardly aware that Dr. Drummond had again left his seat when he started violently at a clap on the shoulder.

“Finlay!” exclaimed the Doctor. “You won’t be offended? No – you couldn’t be offended!”

It was half jocular, half anxious, wholly inexplicable.

“At what,” asked Hugh Finlay, “should I be offended?”

Again, with a deep sigh, the Doctor dropped into his chair. “I see I must begin at the beginning,” he said. But Finlay, with sudden intuition, had risen and stood before him trembling, with a hand against the mantelpiece.

“No,” he said, “if you have anything to tell me of importance, for God’s sake begin at the end.”

Some vibration in his voice went straight to the heart of the Doctor, banishing as it travelled, every irrelevant thing that it encountered.

“Then the end is this, Finlay,” he said. “The young woman, Miss Christie Cameron, whom you were so wilfully bound and determined to marry, has thrown you over – that is, if you will give her back her word – has jilted you – that is, if you’ll let her away. Has thought entirely better of the matter.”

(“He stared out of his great sockets of eyes as if the sky had fallen,” Dr. Drummond would say, recounting it.)

“For – for what reason?” asked Finlay, hardly yet able to distinguish between the sound of disaster and the sense that lay beneath.

“May I begin at the beginning?” asked the Doctor, and Hugh silently nodded.

(“He sat there and never took his eyes off me, twisting his fingers. I might have been in a confession-box,” Dr. Drummond would explain to her.)

“She came here, Miss Cameron, with that good woman, Mrs. Kilbannon, it will be three weeks next Monday,” he said, with all the air of beginning a story that would be well worth hearing. “And I wasn’t very well pleased to see her, for reasons that you know. However, that’s neither here nor there. I met them both at the station, and I own to you that I thought when I made Miss Cameron’s acquaintance that you were getting better than you deserved in the circumstances. You were a thousand miles away – now that was a fortunate thing! – and she and Mrs. Kilbannon just stayed here and made themselves as comfortable as they could. And that was so comfortable that any one could see with half an eye” – the Doctor’s
own eye twinkled – “so far as Miss Cameron was concerned, that she wasn’t pining in any sense of the word. But I wasn’t sorry for you, Finlay, on that account.” He stopped to laugh enjoyingly, and Finlay blushed like a girl.

“I just let matters bide and went about my own business. Though after poor Mrs. Forsyth here – a good woman enough, but the brains of a rabbit – it was pleasant to find these intelligent ladies at every meal, and wonderful how quick they were at picking up the differences between points of Church administration here and at home. That was a thing I noticed particularly in Miss Cameron.

“Matters went smoothly enough – smoothly enough – till one afternoon that foolish creature Advena Murchison” – Finlay started – “came here to pay a call on Miss Cameron and Mrs. Kilbannon. It was well and kindly meant, but it was not a wiselike thing to do. I didn’t exactly make it out, but it seems that she came all because of you and on account of you; and the ladies didn’t understand it, and Mrs. Kilbannon came to me. My word, but there was a woman to deal with! Who was this young lady, and what was she to you that she should go anywhere or do anything in your name? Without doubt” – he put up a staying hand – “it was foolish of Advena. And what sort of freedom, and how far, and why, and what way, and I tell you it was no easy matter, to quiet her. ‘Is Miss Cameron distressed about it?’ said I. ‘Not a bit,’ said she, ‘but I am, and I must have the rights of this matter,’ said she, ‘if I have to put it to my nephew himself.’

“It was at that point, Finlay, that the idea – just then that the thought came into my mind – well I won’t say absolutely, but practically for the first time – ‘Why can’t this matter be arranged on a basis to suit all parties?’ So I said to her, ‘Mrs. Kilbannon,’ I said, ‘if you had reasonable grounds for it, do
you think you could persuade your niece not to marry Hugh Finlay?’ Wait – patience!” He held up his hand, and Finlay gripped the arm of his chair again.

“She just stared at me. ‘Are you gone clean daft, Dr. Drummond?’ she said. ‘There could be no grounds serious enough for that. I will not believe that Hugh Finlay has compromised himself in any way.’ I had to stop her; I was obliged to tell her there was nothing of the kind – nothing of the kind; and later on I’ll have to settle with my conscience about that. ‘I meant,’ I said, ‘the reasonable grounds of an alternative.’ ‘An alternative?’ said she. To cut a long story short,” continued the Doctor, leaning forward, always with the finger in his waistcoat pocket to emphasize what he said, “I represented to Mrs. Kilbannon that Miss Cameron was not in sentimental relations toward you, that she had some reason to suspect you of having placed your affections elsewhere, and that I myself was very much taken up with what I had seen of Miss Cameron. In brief, I said to Mrs. Kilbannon that if Miss Cameron saw no objection to altering the arrangements to admit of it, I should be pleased to marry her myself. The thing was much more suitable in every way. I was fifty-three years of age last week, I told her, ‘but,’ I said, ‘Miss Cameron is thirty-six or seven, if she’s a day, and Finlay there would be like nothing but a grown-up son to her. I can offer her a good home and the minister’s pew in a church that any woman might be proud of – and though far be it from me,’ I said, ‘to depreciate mission work, either home or foreign, Miss Cameron in that field would be little less than thrown away. Think it over,’ I said.

“Well, she was pleased, I could see that. But she didn’t half like the idea of changing the original notion. It was leaving you to your own devices that weighed most with her against it; she’d set her heart on seeing you married with her
approval. So I said to her, to make an end of it, ‘Well, Mrs. Kilbannon,’ I said, ‘suppose we say no more about it for the present. I think I see the finger of Providence in this matter; but you’ll talk it over with Miss Cameron, and we’ll all just make it, for the next few days, the subject of quiet and sober reflection. Maybe at the end of that time I’ll think better of it myself, though that is not my expectation.’

“‘I think,’ she said, ‘we’ll just leave it to Christie.’”

As the Doctor went on with his tale, relaxation had stolen dumbly about Finlay’s brow and lips. He dropped from the plane of his own absorption to the humorous common sense of the recital: it claimed and held him with infinite solace. His eyes had something like the light of laughter in them, flashing behind a cloud, as he fixed them on Dr. Drummond, and said, “And did you?”

“We did,” said Dr. Drummond, getting up once more from his chair, and playing complacently with his watch-charms as he took another turn about the study. “We left it to Miss Cameron, and the result is” – the Doctor stopped sharply and wheeled round upon Finlay – “the result is – why, the upshot seems to be that I’ve cut you out, man!”

Finlay measured the little Doctor standing there twisting his watch-chain, beaming with achieved satisfaction, in a consuming desire to know how far chance had been kind to him, and how far he had to be simply, unspeakably grateful. He stared in silence, occupied with his great debt; it was like him that that, and not his liberty, should be first in his mind. We who have not his opportunity may find it more difficult to decide; but from our private knowledge of Dr. Drummond we may remember what poor Finlay probably forgot at the moment, that even when pitted against Providence, the Doctor was a man of great determination.

The young fellow got up, still speechless, and confronted Dr. Drummond. He was troubled for something to say; the chambers of his brain seemed empty or reiterating foolish sounds. He pressed the hand the minister offered him and his lips quivered. Then a light came into his face, and he picked up his hat.

“And I’ll say this for myself,” chuckled Dr. Drummond. “It was no hard matter.”

Finlay looked at him and smiled. “It would not be, sir,” he said lamely. Dr. Drummond cast a shrewd glance at him and dropped the tone of banter.

“Aye – I know! It’s no joking matter,” he said, and with a hand behind the young man’s elbow, he half pushed him to the door and took out his watch. He must always be starting somebody, something, in the right direction, the Doctor. “It’s not much after half-past nine, Finlay,” he said. “I notice the stars are out.”

It had the feeling of a colloquial benediction, and Finlay carried it with him all the way.

It was nevertheless nearly ten when he reached her father’s house, so late that the family had dispersed for the night. Yet he had the hardihood to ring, and the hour blessed them both, for Advena on the stair, catching who knows what of presage out of the sound, turned, and found him at the threshold herself.

“I
understand how you must feel in the matter, Murchison,” said Henry Cruickshank. “It’s the most natural thing in the world that you should want to clear yourself definitely, especially, as you say, since the charges have been given such wide publicity. On the other hand, I think it quite possible that you exaggerate the inference that will be drawn from our consenting to saw off with the other side on the two principal counts.”

“The inference will be,” said Lorne, “that there’s not a pin to choose between Winter’s political honesty and my own. I’m no Pharisee, but I don’t think I can sit down under that. I can’t impair my possible usefulness by accepting a slur upon my reputation at the very beginning.”

“Politics are very impersonal. It wouldn’t be remembered a year.”

“Winter, of course,” said young Murchison moodily, “doesn’t want to take any chances. He knows he’s done for if we go on. Seven years for him would put him pretty well out of politics. And it would suit him down to the ground to fight
it over again. There’s nothing he would like better to see than another writ for South Fox.”

“That’s all right,” the lawyer responded, “but Moneida doesn’t look altogether pleasant, you know. We may have good grounds for supposing that the court will find you clear of that business; but Ormiston, so far as I can make out, was playing the fool down there for a week before polling-day, and there are three or four Yellow Dogs and Red Feathers only too anxious to pay back a grudge on him. We’ll have to fight again, there’s no doubt about that. The only question is whether we’ll ruin Ormiston first or not. Have you seen Bingham?”

“I know what Bingham thinks,” said Lorne, impatiently. “The squire’s position is a different consideration. I don’t see how I can – However, I’ll go across to the committee-room now and talk it over.”

It is doubtful whether young Murchison knew all that Bingham thought; Bingham so seldom told it all. There were matters in the back of Bingham’s mind that prompted him to urge the course that Cruickshank had been empowered by the opposing counsel to suggest – party considerations that it would serve no useful purpose to talk over with Murchison. Bingham put it darkly when he said he had quite as much hay on his fork as he cared to tackle already, implying that the defence of indiscretions in Moneida was quite an unnecessary addition. Contingencies seemed probable, arising out of the Moneida charges, that might affect the central organization of the party in South Fox to an extent wholly out of proportion with the mere necessity of a second election. Bingham talked it over with Horace Williams, and both of them with Farquharson: they were all there to urge the desirability of “sawing off” upon Lorne when he found them at headquarters. Their most potent argument was, of course, the squire and the
immediate dismissal that awaited him under the law if undue influence were proved against him. Other considerations found the newly elected member for South Fox obstinate and troublesome, but to that he was bound to listen, and before that he finally withdrew his objections. The election would come on again, as happened commonly enough. Bingham could point to the opening, in a few days, of a big flour milling industry across the river, which would help; operations on the Drill Hall and the Post Office would be hurried on at once, and the local party organization would be thoroughly overhauled. Bingham had good reason for believing that they could entirely regain their lost ground, and at the same time dissipate the dangerous impression that South Fox was being undermined. Their candidate gave a reluctant ear to it all, and in the end agreed to everything.

So that Chief Joseph Fry – the White Clam Shell of his own lost fires – was never allowed the chance of making good the election losses of that year, as he had confidently expected to do when the charge came on; nor was it given to any of the Yellow Dogs and Red Feathers of Mr. Cruickshank’s citation to boast at the tribal dog-feasts of the future, of the occasion on which they had bested “de boss.” Neither was any further part in public affairs, except by way of jocular reference, assigned to Finnigan’s cat. The proceedings of the court abruptly terminated, the judges reported the desirability of a second contest, and the public accepted with a wink. The wink in any form was hateful to Lorne Murchison, but he had not to encounter it long.

The young man had changed in none of the aspects he presented to his fellow citizens since the beginning of the campaign. In the public eye he wore the same virtues as he wore the same clothes; he summed up even a greater measure of
success; his popularity was unimpaired. He went as keenly about the business of life, handling its details with the same capable old drawl. Only his mother, with the divination of mothers, declared that since the night of the opera-house meeting Lorne had been “all worked up.” She watched him with furtive anxious looks, was solicitous about his food, expressed relief when she knew him to be safely in bed and asleep. He himself observed himself with discontent, unable to fathom his extraordinary lapse from self-control on the night of his final address. He charged it to the strain of unavoidable office work on top of the business of the campaign, abused his nerves, talked of a few days’ rest when they had settled Winter. He could think of nothing but the points he had forgotten when he had his great chance. “The flag should have come in at the end,” he would say to himself, trying vainly to remember where it did come in. He was ill pleased with the issue of that occasion; and it was small compensation to be told by Stella that his speech gave her shivers up and down her back.